1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to sand cores for casting manufactured parts and, more specifically, to dimension checking devices.
2. Description of the Art
A variety of manufactured parts or workpieces are cast from iron or other metal. In particular, a block for an internal combustion engine, along with the corresponding intake and exhaust manifolds, water jacket, etc., is commonly cast from iron or aluminum. Such engine blocks are of complex design with numerous internal bores and passages for cylinders, coolant flow passages, spark plugs, injectors, etc. Core elements, such as sand cores, are commonly employed to form such passageways in an engine block. Such core elements are themselves formed in a mold from casting sand and suitable resin binders.
In a multi-cylinder internal combustion engine, individual core elements representing the passages for one or two cylinders each, as well as additional core elements containing one or more intake and/or exhaust passageways, water jacket portions, etc., are interconnected and built up onto each other in a stack to form a sand core for a complete block. The complete sand core is then placed in another mold into which molten metal is poured to cast the metal about the sand core. After the metal solidifies, the core elements are removed thereby leaving cylinders, air intake and exhaust passageways, and coolant flow paths in the cast engine block.
Since the complete core for an engine block and associated components is formed of a number of individual core elements, misalignment of the assembled core elements, inaccurately molded elements, loosely interconnected elements or angularly offset elements frequently occur. The use of such a misaligned core results in a cast engine block which does not meet design specifications and, therefore, must be scrapped. In the case of an engine block, this is extremely costly.
It would be more effective from a cost standpoint to provide an easy means for checking the alignment and dimensional arrangement of individual core elements of a complete sand core prior to casting a workpiece thereabout. Thus, it would be desirable to provide a sand core dimension checking apparatus which quickly and easily checks the position of the individual core elements of a complete sand core for proper alignment, spacing, overall length, angular arrangement, etc. It would also be desirable to provide a sand core dimension checking apparatus which is capable of checking the dimensional location of various parts of a complete core formed of individual, interconnected core elements and comparing the measured dimensions with predetermined acceptable manufacturing dimensions or tolerances to provide an indication of an acceptable or unacceptable sand core prior to the use of the sand core in a casting operation.